Sunday, April 24, 2011

Moon - The Film

This is an eerie film.
On earth life is good, with limitless energy, harvested from solar flares (don't try and follow the pseudo-science) but the arrangements come at some cost. On the moon, Sam Bell is two weeks off the end of his three year tour of duty.  Quite alone, apart from a robot called GERTY, voiced by Kevin Spacey, the isolation is the worse for having no direct communication with earth, watching only pre-recorded video clips.
We see Sam scald his wrist when distracted by a hallucination, and as Gerty applies a bandage, the robot challenges his explanation that he was distracted by the TV. The robot challenging the human is quietly threatening, but this is not 2001 A space odyssey, where Hal the computer turns against the humans. Gerty stays true to his programming of helping Sam, even when it involves breaking company protocols.
As you begin to appreciate the setup, you wonder what happens if Sam is injured away from the home station, attending the  harvesting machines. We do not have to wait long, before that is exactly what does happen.  It is after that that the film start to get really eerie.

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